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 Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2015 6:24 pm
[5 of 5]And they say, “You got a demon.”Word Count: 1281Directly succeeds Burn It All Away and The Wicked PromiseThe recovery process drew long with Lorne's care, Colin's worry, and Hvergelmir's gentle company. Isaiah hadn't intended to stay beyond his time with the staples out, but insistence retained him at Lorne's apartment for some time. Tastykake, his ever-loyal cat, was taken care of by Olga every chance she could get. For all he knew, she may be spending the night on occasion (though he wondered if she knew exactly how soiled those couches were or that bed was). From the few times he visited his shop during his recovery time, he approved of what he saw - business progressed as usual without him as the mark of an excellent general manager. In part he found it relieving to know that his life could progress so smoothly around injury, but he often asked himself if this was proof that he was extraneous in his own roles. If, perhaps, he should sell his business to his general manager and step out indefinitely. If he should leave Scholomance to rot and spend his time elsewhere.
Isaiah’s recovery time was not absent hitches - during the first days, he strongly considered the corruption offered by Labyrinthite, Cinnabar and Ashanite. He considered simply leaving his life behind, taking the gamble and hoping that his civilian memories found oblivion when he emerged from the turn, and that his life might find better footing in different territory. He hoped to dismiss Scholomance from his life as the foreboding wonder it was, and perhaps find guidance in the strict regime the Negaverse had to offer. Some joined the military for that exact purpose - to find structure and dependability. The Negaverse promised to take care of him, to set him up right if only he pledged himself to their service. It was an offer far too tempting.
And, perhaps, it was Ashanite's unhappiness coupled with the vigilant reassurance of his friends that stayed that decision. For now.
Isaiah sent a surfeit of letters during his recovery time - whether by need to communicate with others or aimless frustration, he didn’t know. But each found their mark, and ultimately, he was left with no papers returned to sender - including those sent to Labyrinthite, to Ashanite. Sometimes he considered mailing letters to himself, as later encouragement to stay clean through these vitriolic affairs, but the silliness of leaving himself a mark made by Scholomance (not to mention the dangers inherent in it) stayed his hand. He left himself no notes, and more importantly, no encouragement.
For even though the pressures of addiction grew larger, steadier, bolder than what they were before, Isaiah thought that he should be beyond such pressures. He thought that he should have internalized all the encouragements and coping mechanisms taught religiously by NA. Isaiah hadn’t called his sponsor since he moved to DC, and he took that as a sign that he had outgrown the need for such support. A part of him knew it was folly to think so, for there are times when any addict, however vigilant, might slip, and that he may well approach that time himself. Not everyone endures the double life of a knight - that posed its own challenges that he needed to account for.
Isaiah did not return home due to completing his tenure at Lorne’s. He doubted the man would’ve turned down his staying indefinitely; Lorne may have even encouraged a permanent move. And for all his kindness, and consideration, and especially his selfishness, Isaiah liked him fine. Perhaps it would’ve worked. But the shopkeeper was much too used to his own space, his own habits, and his own private vices to share such times with anyone else anymore. He tried but once, and those years ended in an abrupt and volatile meltdown. Isaiah thought he lacked the mental wherewithal to try twice. Sobriety, as it were, left him in a cold state.
Isaiah did, however, return to the apartment due to ominous notes submitted ad infinitum by his friend and ally, Gehenna. He appeared terribly concerned, soliciting answers from Isaiah himself with no clear cause. Something had the man spooked enough to respond where radio silence prevailed between them earlier. The slurry of letters and hastily scrawled handwriting convinced Isaiah of Kam’s honesty in his concern, and certainly fed the growing pit of worry that gnawed through his stomach lining. Something had to occur that involved Isaiah for Kam to have gone to these lengths - and since Isaiah’s shop was perfectly safe, every worker very meticulously accounted for, Isaiah wondered if Kam’s worry had something to do with his condominium. If it had something to do with her.
Isaiah did not return home out of concern for its well-being. He listened to Aegir about keeping his personal identity separate from his powered identity long ago, and learned to power up in quiet locations that afforded no onlookers. He ensured that his business in no way supported one side or another, and was careful to avoid discussing these matters with his customers. Additionally, Scholomance meant very little to the war, and he imagined to the other side as well. Beyond Labyrinthite’s attempt at shearing off his leg, he never sustained a serious attack before. And as Hvergelmir pointed out, Labyrinthite was a mercurial man with obscure reasons for the acts he perpetrated. Perhaps the attack was, after all, unrelated. Perhaps spreading the man’s name in his recovery was a bad idea, as only Labyrinthite would know who he attacked and when, but he doubted anyone had the sense to spread that information around. If nothing else, he left them who to look out for and why.
Isaiah did, however, return to the apartment in a derealized daze. He stood not far beyond the caution tape that was secured in a wide berth around the building. He recognized, at a glance, a few of his neighbors that he rather liked - the married girls from across the hall that were kind enough to exchange baking recipes with him, the middle-aged loner from two doors down that often visited him for drinks and comisery, and the hair stylist from next door that Isaiah flirted with relentlessly but was (surprisingly, considering the stereotype) very straight. He knew not who else was there, but the lot of them looked worried - and Isaiah imagined they fretted over their own things, their own life memories that sat naked and endangered by the devouring heat. And as he looked up at the licking fireball that emerged from the wall of windows, already shattered outward and into the street, he remembered all the articles about how fire might catch from one house to the next. And he thought, for a moment, that they were all deeply and utterly stupid for thinking that the blaze would pass through the resistant brick walls separating the apartments. That it would, somehow, pass through concrete flooring into the living spaces below.
He knew the cops wouldn’t release information until they were ready to do so. Isaiah opened his contacts list to find Olga’s name, and typed out a simply ask for how she was doing. With one message sent, he called up Kam’s cell phone number and let it ring twice before he spoke to the answered line.
“So.” He spoke very calmly into the receiver, despite the roar of flames and licking heat and panicked declarations of passersby. “My condo looks pretty aesthetic while it’s burning.” And with it, for the first time in a long year, he felt an urge to use that he couldn’t swallow down.
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Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2015 10:18 am
It has eaten all its knights. It wears them well.Word Count: 2415Scholomance's urgency rose and fell in cusps. He knew it to be so, especially after his ascension to Squire. Sometimes he thought of cataloguing their strengths, but he loathed the reminders that it called perpetually. They did not, from what he knew, coincide with the phases of the moon.
But deep in the night, Scholomance issued a demand so urgent that it punctured its beleaguered knight's attenuated sleep. He woke with a start, and knew immediately the lurching in his chest that urged him toward the stars. To Saturn, the death planet, to Hades. To Scholomance, Blaine's prison.
To, perhaps, his own prison.
Isaiah never rose from the bed, but it stood empty in short order.
xxx
Clouds blanketed the foreboding island, hanging low until their discarnate wefts of mist teased the tops of the smaller buildings. The tower, the Observatory, extended far into the clouds where he could no longer view its top. And while he stood there, its squire, and looked to where the stars and shimmering rings should've been overhead, he thought to himself that the Wonder felt even more intimidating with the shroud of clouds smothering it. For as much as he knew he could leave for Earth on a thought, Scholomance felt trapped. He felt caged away between the commanding presence of his wonder, the suffocating clouds, and the roiling waves of the once-placid lake that surrounded him.
And while he knew his wonder lacked its former glory, a portion of it maintained its former power in an eerie, deep blue glow. This eminence traced the outer doors to the tower, illuminating the depression that shaped his signet ring. Scholomance approached, pressed the ring to its indentation, and the doors opened to reveal the same decrepit space he knew from his time with Ashanite.
Curiously, as he set foot in the marble expanse, the once-broken torches flickered and groaned to life, spending their cold lighting across the gloomy space. Shadows yawned and sprawled across ancient, ornate pillars or crawled through the maws of arches. One column's shadow struck across the once-picturesque grand staircase that fanned out to the floors above. But Scholomance looked at none of these things - he paid no heed to the broken tables and chairs, nor to the desk where he first found his signet ring, nor to the rows of careful lights that regained function when none remained before. Instead, his eyes followed the deep blue glow that permeated either side of his walkway, leading him on toward a hallway on his right that formed an ambulatory about the space. The urgency grew greater as he followed it, egging him on, confirming with him that he was, finally, operating under the wonder's wishes.
When he rounded the great space and followed its meek latticed entrance behind the staircase, he found a door - or perhaps, more accurately, a mirror - of black lacquered finish. The blue glow rolled forward and curled about the piece, and for a moment Scholomance studied his monochromatic reflection within. There, he felt - if only for a moment - the hazy, derisive glare of another entity looking back toward him. He saw nothing but himself, but he felt it keenly.
It did not last long. He pressed a hand to the mirror, half-expecting it to budge, and felt a hard surface pushing back against him.
"Blaine!" He called, and his voice echoed up into the tower's vast expanse. Something rumbled back at him, and he wondered if parts of the tower crumbled with his every breath. He had to try, regardless. "Blaine!" The urgency echoed back to him.
No response.
When he glanced about himself a second time, he noted his ancestor's figure crouched near his left, back to the young squire, and hands clasped over the back of his head. He looked toward the ground, and his hands looked buckled under pressure.
Scholomance ventured toward him tentatively. "Blaine?" He heard nothing of the man - only a thin whine that he wasn't entirely certain came from either of them.
When he turned back to the mirror-door, he heard a single command issued, disembodied, that sounded much like Blaine's voice. When he looked to where he found the man, he was gone - nowhere in sight.
"Use your magic," he had said.
So he did. Calling up what energy he could, Scholomance touched the ground with his bone cane and the mirror yawned wide, tore away into teeth that sank into him, through him, left him dizzy and disoriented and nauseated, left him grasping for reorientation, left him standing atop the familiar arches that once crowned the ceiling of the place. Scholomance spared no pause to contemplate what happened to him, for the blue glow now shot beyond him, down the grand staircase, and into the blackened depths.
As quickly as he could muster, Scholomance descended the stairs with the help of his cane. His gaze swapped between the phosphorescence's current location and his own steps, and as it progressed farther down he caught sight of a wavering echo of their luminescent presence. He continued, and descended further stairs, and looked to upside-down portraits that looked more like old portals on his way. The building's architecture grew older and older with his descent but he did not question it - the ornate columns that sprung up around him looked to hold the sky for their years of sculpted beauty. Still, he did not pause.
Beyond darkness and further darkness, into blackness where his only hope of navigation was touch and the kind lighting that showed his path, Scholomance reached some manner of bottom floor. As he approached the circle of luminous blue, he stood in its very center to find much the same material as the mirror-door he found before. Again, he touched cane to floor and the glows peeled away, the shadows and columns and blackened reflection raveled away into their illusory flux. Again, he felt the material rise, and again, he felt as though he was drowning, and again, it stole him into semiconsciousness.
When he regained himself, a caustic orange light beat down onto the black floor. Scholomance groaned, and looked skyward before his eyes adjusted to new light. He found a wavering scene of dust staring back at him, swaying slowly in pendulum fashion. The more he peered into it, he started to realize that a background far from the curious orange residue shifted to and fro in a bluster.
"Am I below the lake?" He asked in a whisper. It felt far too loud. Fear gripped him then, the austere, utterly basic trepidation that he was well and truly alone - in that he was without the company of men. And while Hvergelmir, or Babylon, or Mont Blonc or Gehenna or even Mistral were only a short call away, the darkness here listened with a rapt sentience that left him paralyzed. It loomed over him and swaddled him simultaneously. It would know no disobedience.
And Scholomance, for all his prior death wishes, lacked the spine to defy it.
So he refrained from calling out for Blaine as he descended further blue-lined steps. He offered no complaint to the darkness while he pained his way down a ladder despite his leg's protests. And when he spent the last of his energies on a final magical cast, and the blackened metal swallowed him whole a final time, he found himself in a room far unlike the rest.
The room was cylindrical by nature, with a domed floor that sloped toward its single fixture. What must have once been brilliant honorific tapestries hung from a decaying overlook. Flecks of blackened, unidentifiable substance hung down with them and formed a dystopian bead curtain around the fixture. The walls themselves, coupled with the floor, knew a mostly eroded painting - of what, he couldn't guess. Glass bevels traced up the walls in an immaculate pattern, filled the the blue glow from prior, but this time they pulsed in a perfect interpretation of a heartbeat. Here, the room hummed at such a low frequency that Scholomance felt it in his jaw; it only slackened on the pulse instances. Finally he pulled himself to his shaken feet and started toward the fixture, parted the broken veil, and witnessed the fixture for what it was.
A single basin of delicate carving stood open to him, offering clarion water that looked nearly nonexistent. It sat entirely still, even with the garnishments of three unidentifiable, but terribly brilliant, blooming flowers. Even these Scholomance barely noticed, for a glowing blue orb sat in the very center of a basin, in a recess of its own, and his heart nigh stopped in his chest when his mind registered its nature. Somewhere, water echoed as it touched the floor.
This is the Code Piece Hvergelmir spoke of. It feels just the same as it did on Olympus. For a long minute, he stared into its thrall until his retinas ached. It did not greet him, and he did not greet it.
"Code," he started roughly, when he at last found his voice. Licking his lips, Scholomance framed his question as it formed in his mind. He searched for words, for pertinent questions, for anything that might fit the commanding framing of the moment. Questions sat heavy on his chest, crushing away his breath in their wait for voice. "Do you want chaos stopped?" It was the first question that came to mind.
"There must be balance." It spoke with no lips, no tongue, no mouth. It spoke without air. And yet, it spoke with a power far more prodigious than Scholomance could comprehend. "You cannot stop chaos, only control it."
"Then why don't you give us more power?" The question came automatically.
"I do not give power, I am power. I choose to share, but do you think you could even handle more power? You flounder enough as it is." The last of its words burnt into his mind, like an afterimage of staring at the sun.
Scholomance's breath failed him then. He cast his gaze away from the orb and toward the worn scrapes of paint that strayed near the beautiful blue glass veins. It's right. All this time... All this time and I've spent it on Kam's couch. Or I've spent it profiteering with this convenient second identity. What have I done but squander the power I now command?
"Is there any relation between you and Metallia?" She who claimed ties to the Earth throne was likely a lesser force than the code, but if the pair shared some kind of common ground, some kind of common ancestry, then perhaps-
"How do you define Metallia?" Its voice rang through his thoughts, wilting them with perceived ire. "Do you even know what she is? How can you even begin to compare the two of us when you know so little."
Anger tried to flare within the depths of the imposing, austere tower, though it found very little kindling in him. All he managed was a single phrase, asked in derision more than genuine curiosity. He seethed it through teeth. "How can you admonish me for knowing nothing when you won't deign to share with me." He expected no answer, then, not to a reaction borne of defensiveness and irritation. "Why do we even need you at all?"
Yet an answer he obtained. "Your power comes from the Code. You need me or you have no magic. A useless knight you'd be without it."
Fingers trembled with the need to break the cool, tranquil surface of the water. He considered seizing the orb then, throwing it to the ground, or simply crushing it between palms, but if its power was indeed so vast... Slowly he smothered his ire, returned his shaken hands to his sides, and gripped his cane in a white knuckle grasp to disseminate some of the swallowed rage. "A useless knight I am, as you already pointed out. Why am I a knight at all? Why am I Scholomance's knight? Tell me - what does Scholomance want of me?"
"You."
The squire faltered, clamored, searched for some end to the cold numbness that pervaded him with that single poignant word. It wants nothing of me. It just wants me. This... All these bones... Scholomance paled, and a halo of the galaxy ringed his vision with a hundred thousand brilliant stars. Breaths came, yet they never felt like enough. His chest tightened. He swallowed, yet nothing passed his throat.
Were all these bones, all those collections of corpses that I found in the Ossuary, prior knights of Scholomance?
Hastily he reached for a diversion - any question, anything unrelated to the fate awaiting him for serving his detestable wonder. "Blaine has never been terribly forthcoming with answers around me. Why does he hold back with me?"
The code issued forth its same commanding non-voice, the thoughts superimposed on Scholomance's own. "Perhaps he is not what he seems. Maybe he doesn't think you deserve his time."
Panic only welled further. He thought, fleetingly, that his heart would run itself through tachycardia and into cardiac arrest. "Please, can I give my knighthood to someone else?"
"Do you think anyone would be foolish enough to take it? No. This is your burden. You cannot flee from it. You'll carry it to your grave and beyond."
And beyond. I'll die and I'll hold Blaine's same lonely vigil for the next knight to die in this place. No - this can't be right - I can't think that this is right -
I won't haunt this place for a thousand years. I refuse.
I have to corrupt before I let this place swallow my soul.
The ominous presence of Scholomance faded from him then, and he found himself in a place far more surreal than where he stood second before - coal-tainted brick walls extended beneath him, and long-stained concrete spanned out around him with little more than the scanty HVAC duct to punctuate the expanse. He collapsed then, his legs no longer willing to hold their burden, and succumbed to the blindness brought on by his bottomless trepidation. Short strokes of breath carried with them no relief. His skin clammed with the algid dew of terror, and for minutes after, he could not move.
When at last the raw panic left him, drained as he was, the squire hauled himself to his beleaguered feet to walk the long road back to Kam's.
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Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2015 5:53 am
Predates Everything is Terrible.There’s an Art to InflictionWord Count: 1052Sleep came fitfully, and laden with terrible haunts. Isaiah never slept particularly well since his injury, but he passed most nights without great issues. Lately, however, his dreams meandered into the strange and the bizarre, the realms of Scholomance that he witnessed on so many occasions now. Sometimes he dreamt of the tower, sometimes of its ambulatories, sometimes of the Ossuary, and sometimes of the Sanctuary. Sometimes he dreamt not at all of the place, but of the water itself and its unnerving placidness. Sometimes still he dreamt of the very bottom of the tower, where the basin stood holding cool water and a piece of the Code.
Isaiah remembered the answers he received in full. They oscillated in and out of his consciousness at will, nearly ever-present in a work day. They taunted him at any point when he considered powering up. The Code already declared his worthlessness as a knight - what further answers did he need toward corruption? Of all his myriad failures, what held him to this life, this knighthood? He knew with certainty it wasn't a fiancée, or a deep-seated sense of righteousness directed toward Order's plight. He knew it wasn't loyalty to the Code or to his wonder.
He had only to conclude that it was cowardice - that it was a fear of change to come.
But Isaiah had little time to question it when sleep claimed him. He had little time to reflect upon it when he found himself standing before that familiar basin, just beyond the rusted-out cascade of black behind him, forming a would-be art nouveau lattice to hide them from view. The pitted basin felt all too realistic beneath his hands; he wondered even still if this was a facet of a dream, or a pocket of reality. Perhaps his own nudity before the Code served as the only reminder.
His gaze traveled from the brilliant blue orb to the black metal curtain. "Code." The word sounded sharp in his tongue. It cut as it passed his lips. "If I'm supposed to prove my worth as a knight, I think I need to know what happened here. Blaine either cannot recall or chooses not to recall what it was. Will you tell me?" To look back to the code demanded more willpower than he expected; a full minute passed before he wrenched his gaze toward the brilliant light that coursed through his wonder.
"Nothing." Its words matched his vitriol in spades. "The past is dead and buried. Why do you cling to it? You'll make the same mistakes no matter what. Or... No, this time you're making new mistakes. You're making worse ones."
Worse ones. By floundering, no doubt. By pulling Negaverse agents, ex-Saturn knights, to my wonder. Or by letting this place rot in its own miseries. I wonder if it's worth trying to prove this damnable lightbulb wrong. One hand slipped from its perch on the lip of the basin and hovered just beyond the water. He hesitated but a moment before he committed to wrenching the Code from its beveled home, and dipped fingers just beneath the surface. Immediately he regretted it - his mind bleached white in an instant, a searing pain splitting through the very center of his skull. Withdrawing his hand, he shook the water from his fingers, and even still a blistering headache throbbed behind his eyes. Briefly he felt an impetus to remember something, yet no matter how he clawed at the bleeding recesses of his mind, he found nothing. Whatever it was, the Code must've taken it.
Isaiah pressed hand to face and groaned. The pressure continued to build and he started to wonder if he'd discover a nosebleed soon. "You told me once..." Speaking the words produced further pain. "That I flounder much as a knight. That there must be balance in the universe and yet I'm ******** around with my time as a knight doing mostly nothing. I understand that as the truth." Pausing, he pressed both hands to the bridge of his nose. The headache worsened significantly before it showed signs of tapering off. "But shouldn't the balance of Chaos be left to the Negaverse? They're the ones who hold that power in their grip, not us. Why are knights even needed when the task should be left to Chaos to manage its own?"
"The balance. Were you listening? The universe needs balance, on both sides. But you seem to speak so highly of them. Perhaps you would do better in their company."
Perhaps I would.
"Then tell me about Metallia. Tell me about chaos."
"You ask about her, again." The Code sounded disappointed, if Isaiah could qualify the tone as such. "Perhaps you ought to ask one of her followers before you come to me. I do not have time for ignorance."
"Yet you answer me still." Finally Isaiah pulled himself upright and stared down into the pool. The water trembled slightly with his shaken grip. "If all this is so far beyond my comprehension, then honor one request. Tell me what I should do - tell me how I'm supposed to stop ruining Scholomance."
A pause came, and Isaiah felt rather dizzy as he stared into the water. Finally the Code spoke. "Anything would be better than what you have managed. I'm disappointed a Knight could be so out of touch with something he is so intricately tied to. Perhaps you were never destined to succeed. You seem the sort to surrender. To your Wonder? Or to the Chaos. You cannot stand alone."
Isaiah woke with a start, wrenching his face from the pillow at a speed that irritated the muscles in his neck. Groaning, he cupped a hand over the prominent projections of his cervical vertebrae. Clasping his free hand over his mouth, he muttered into his palm. “********.” Morning peered through the window curiously. The thin slats of the sun chased away what remained of the dolorous dream. “This has to end,” he said to himself hoarsely. Legs splayed out behind him and he laid prostrate against his pillow once more, his dull gaze staring out beyond the collection of covers to the painted wall opposite him.
“This has to end.” And, finally, he knew how to go about it.
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Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2015 3:17 am
[Blaine] and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apartWord Count: N/A"interesting that he brought a friend the other day,"" he said to the book. It lay open in his palm, pages mostly worn away and desiccated with a thousand years of neglect. What survived was a few scanty sentences with no context or meaning to the person reading it. And scour as he did, his memory provided him with no additional snippets of details for this particular book. A shame, he considered it, for its title sounded promising. "I still can't believe that wasn't Nephthys. She looked just like her. It's been so long since I've seen that face..." The book was shut, and replaced in its crumbling recess on the shelf.
A Distillation of Magic Into Aqueous Form with Practical Projection on its Uses, it read on the spine.
He chose another book not far beneath it. This one, he remembered, had a velvet backing - he liked any excuse to hold it in his palm, or brush it against his features when talking with others. He remembered it was written by Devon Price, but little more than that. The man was a genius for his work with magic as an operative power source, as a pathway through materials to carry energy or information. And while his work required restrictive tubes to stay the path of the magic to the one he directed, there was promise in his later attempts at 'blanket power', or tubeless conductivity. With a prayer in mind, Blaine opened the book. Some fragments remained, thankfully, while the rest of the ink may have been rubbed to oblivion. "I should've spent more time on utilitarian aspects. If I'd have known this was coming for my collection, then a little effort invested in recovery of books and ink to their original forms would've gone a long way. But foresight has never been the forte of Scholomance knights," he finished, glancing pointedly toward the painting to his left.
The archways harbored the only obscurity between his personal library and his main bedroom, where around the walls hung several paintings of past Scholomance knights. The magic had long faded from these, but their composition preserved mostly well. It helped that the sunlight did not often stretch toward that room, and the draperies once-present between the arches cut out much of the sun's damaging rays. Long disintegrated, they offered no further protection to the paintings that remained, and even the best ones started to deteriorate. Scholomance was decaying now, becoming its own corpse in the age of death studies. While the irony was not lost on him, he found rage more suitable than dark humors.
But Blaine's rage always burned a cool one - he pursed his lips and cast his gaze to his book once more, offering no angry diatribe or bluster of boisterous actions to alleviate his feelings. They would find retribution enough when his plans reached completion. "There's no greater gift to a scientist than to see his research used. You'd understand, Devon." He kept his gaze sharply to the book.
"Interesting," he finished, after a solid hour of reading. The book reached the shelf in its dictated order. "That gives me some ideas...? Scholomance?" Hands clasped together, Blaine cast his attention toward the bedroom. That's strange. He shouldn't have access in here. He's never been up this far. But nothing lingered below the paintings, around the bed, near the old vanity, or the sitting room arranged near the door. Nothing proved amiss between the great, linear, glass skylight that once allowed a telescoping lens imported from Mercury to peer into the night sky. While he doubted the current knight greatly, he couldn't help but wonder if the new one's borderline insanity was catching. Perhaps it was. He didn't stop to dwell on it.
Nerves are obstructing my path. He cast a last suspicious glance toward the bedroom before he walked toward it, and took a seat at the long desk that often occupied him late into the night. Hands folded properly on his lap, and he looked to the dried-up inkwell that once remained perpetually full thanks to a student's highly useful invention (and he expected that student didn't remain in the roster when she heard her invention wouldn't see use through Scholomance). The magic faded long ago, he knew, around the time he realized that Scholomance's collapse was an inevitability. Even now, parts of the tower grew unstable and most of the upper regions crumbled to an uncertain point. Perhaps only the dead should traverse beyond the latter floors, as they were weightless, and could move without destroying anything.
Blaine knew from experience.
"Scholomance's studies haven't been used in centuries. Most of it is gone now, completely wasted. None of my attempts to reach other Wonders has done any good. I can only imagine the rest of Saturn looks much the same. It can't be that Scholomance is the only facility to find abandonment." Blaine took the pen in hand and rolled it around between thumb and forefinger. He pressed the nib to old, disintegrated paper and pushed letters into the piles of pulp. "I'm still surprised that there's been a knight after all these years. There's very little left to protect. All the magic, all the documents, all the people who once ran experiments are all gone. What is he to do now? Protect an empty information database? Conduct new experiments on his own? This place is a carcass now, and for all my efforts, I've never once been able to raise the dead.
"If I'm right, we'll both be better off when it's done." The pen was relinquished to the old, weathered desk.
"It will take several months to complete on my own. In the mean time, I can use the period of his visits to study the changes in Scholomance. I've memorized these halls after spending so long in them; I've seen the reversals that come about when he's here. It's very strange... Like parts of this old tower are rebuilding itself simply because he visited. It's a curious magic that I haven't seen before. Restoring old, broken lamp posts to functioning without even touching them... He isn't very far from resurrection."
Blaine stood abruptly and turned a sharp glance toward the cracked doorway into the halls. Smoke evaporated only muscle twitch moments after he looked to the door. Silently he remained, motionless he was, while he tried to process what he saw.
I wasn't wrong. Something else is here. Something that doesn't want me to see it.
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 8:20 am
So he waits for its knell.Word Count: 1381Unease dominated his entire day. The physical therapy, the shift at the store, and the subsequent meeting with the insurance company each found completion under an unconscionably heady blanket of dread. It did not subside throughout the day, nor did it slacken when he returned to Kam's. Isaiah found that dealing with the dread would've been easier if it mounted throughout the day, but it maintained its high baseline clinically well. Never once did he experience a peak or a valley in its presentation throughout the delay.
Sometime during his lunch hour, Isaiah felt the curious nag of a letter in wait, and received it when the office was empty. In it was Mont Blonc's unmistakeable handwriting delivering a heartfelt (and, naturally, self-deprecating) note concerning Isaiah's recent thoughts. He mentioned his selfishness in wanting Isaiah to remain at his side, and the acknowledgements of Isaiah's dire position. He gave what he thought he could as a friend - an open shoulder, a willing ear, and clarification of his personal attachment to the shopkeeper. A part of him wanted to count the number of instances of the word 'selfish' and its permutations (which, he found almost unconsciously, was three), and a part of him wanted to deconstruct the letter in his natural aversion to deep relationships.
But neither practice served him, or Lorne, in any positive fashion. Isaiah sighed quietly and retired the note to his desk drawer while he finished his lunch. The day spoke of unusually high demands for customer service, and he knew the note was better left to stew for a while as he considered a proper response.
By late dusk, he returned home without the assistance of his cane. His leg complained terribly of its soreness, but after two ibuprofen and a single malt scotch, Isaiah would hear no further complaints of it. The shopkeeper pilfered the small office area for printer paper and an adequate pen (sadly, he found he had to settle for mechanical pencil) and returned to the couch he now called home. After taking a seat, Isaiah placed the letter on his left side to parallel with the blank pieces. In the margin of the document received, he bulleted out the main points he learned from Lorne's letter and the points he wanted to address. Only when he was certain he collected the necessary information did he start drafting his response.xfrayedflower My good friend Lorne, Your troubles at speech are as much an endearment as they are a hindrance. Do not feel that writing me a letter is a lesser act than meeting in person; we both keep busy schedules, and while there my be rare gaps where we are in alignment, it is not always in our best interest to confront these topics in settings of immediacy. Sometimes, I find, it is better to answer after one has passed several minutes in critical thought. There have been several to try to convince me against the merits of the Negaverse, in all manner of ways. I have heard argument that the Negaverse endorses brainwashing tactics of unknown detail to force its officers to obey Metallia unquestioningly. I have heard that chaos warps, that I will lose my memories, that my life as I know it will cease to be. There were cases made that the Negaverse, for all its utility in teleportation and deadly weaponry, may produce greater problems for its officers than if I remained a knight of Scholomance. I have seen a partially youmafied general - a fate that I did not realize could occur. And I have been hunted, as you know, by members of the Negaverse who would see me dead or corrupted and have nothing more to do with me beyond that. I have encountered those who utterly lack reasoning capacity, who believe that barter is a fool's occupation. Similarly, I have encountered knights that, while not knowing me, offer almost all of their resources to me by virtue of my being a knight. I have been sat down by numerous friends while they try to deduce why, exactly, this option looks so amenable to me. But, of all these occurrences, seldom have I heard any personal reasons to tie me to this faction. No one has said before that Scholomance is a knight needed within Order. I don't expect anyone to name me as a knight integral in combat, of course, but the message you delivered to me is the most honest and personal of all talks concerning corruption. You have given reasoning that my contributions affect you on a personal level, and that I do have a place of belonging among my peers, beyond what I can commit to warfare. As I write this, I frown on myself for using such formal language about it - as you opened your personal feelings to me, I see it only fair to complete the exchange. Perhaps each of us experience limitation in communication mediums. I imagine you will be delighted to hear that I am no longer actively considering corruption. This is not to say I am entirely against it, as there are still many seductive aspects to it that I feel would be an improvement over my current life state. However, I don't want to lose touch with the relationships I have formed with you, Colin, Nadia, Auguste, and others I've met during my time as a knight. The tribulations I suffer through my civilian life, and the demands made of me by Scholomance, must be dealt with as I can manage. They will each come to an end - it is only a matter of maintaining my wherewithal to finish the tasks set before me. I do not doubt your sincerity in offering your assistance, and for that, I ask that I may lean on you for a time to collect myself again. As you said yourself, Isaiah Zähne is not the happiest person. Sometimes it's important to loose that unhappiness in careful company. While I can maintain resistance to corruption now, that resistance will not always be strong. PS: Worry not, Lorne, I will not show this note to Nadia - I imagine she would be quite incensed to read your insistence that I not leave you. I am sure she would be quite shocked to read that we have been together on the side. Ever yours, Isaiah
This doesn't feel like Scholomance's normal obtrusive cycle. Is it nagging because of my last venture to it? The Code always insisted on balance... I imagine that inadvertently dragging a general to the Wonder wasn't terribly respectful of that. The gamble paid off, however, and he still lived - uncorrupted, per Lorne's wishes. He knew it would be folly to list such a close call in response to a letter as personal and charged as Lorne's.
Still, had it left a lasting effect on Scholomance? Isaiah expected it did. Blaine would know, regardless; for as useless as his ancestor was at times, the man was quite astute to Scholomance's 'moods', much like its current knight.
Isaiah managed a last steady breath. "I pledge my life and loyalty to Saturn, and to Scholomance. I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine." He waited, then, for the quick transition of living room to the Scholomance campus, yet he still found himself staring into the muted reflection in the TV. Nothing of the room had changed - the walls, windows, and couch all remained in their position without a hint toward any intended movement. "What the ********. Did I stutter?" Looking skyward, Isaiah glowered. Again, he repeated the pledge.
You have to be shitting me. You can't loom up there and glare down at me all day and not let me see what's pissing you off. Is this about the general? That wasn't even intentional! Come off it, already.
But the dread remained. Intuition told him it wasn't Scholomance after all.
That only complicated matters.
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Posted: Sun Jan 24, 2016 6:10 am
[1 of 3] [Blaine] since feeling is firstWord Count: N/A“Leave now.” The declaration came shakily from Blaine’s precarious perch. Here, the tongue of Scholomance protruded outward from one of its highest sanctums, and the conglomeration of broken flooring yawned and curled outward over a steep fall. At one time, he found it beautiful - at that very same time, he found it far safer with the presence of a guard rail. Now, the thick slabs crumbled and leaned with little more than magic and crumbling pillars to support them.
But the creature below - the spirit, precisely - yielded to no man’s word. It watched with its mouth affixed in a garish open permanence. It gaped in silent, mocking laughter at all that dared confront it now. It stared without eyes toward the man atop the broken peninsula. Its grin remained, its collection of mist remained, its skeletal conglomeration of a body remained. Nothing about it dissipated wholly into the night, not at Blaine’s behest. It gestured at last, using a single too-long arm composed of mismatched parts to point its bone fingers toward the ancestor-knight. There, its hand remained unwaveringly. If it offered speech, its words came as a series of whispers and tricks of the wind.
Blaine did not wait for an explanation. Immediately he hid himself from the creature, returning to a form incorporeal himself. The knight’s chambers weren’t far, he knew; he could make a beeline for their confines and reach the place before this ethereal monstrosity even drew close. A handful of steps cleared him of the hallway, another handful through the arches, and a smattering carried him to the chambers themselves where the last door of Scholomance closed to the outside realm. He backed from the threshold, turned so that he could see the whole of the gateway himself and know that not even the latest knight of Scholomance could pass its toll. He would be safe, he knew, in the trappings he entertained in life.
Can the dead haunt the dead? The thought felt as vast as the universe and as solitary as the world.
Blaine took his seat in his petrified chair, and soon buried his face in his hands. He would’ve sighed if he remembered how. I knew the day I saw it that I wasn’t alone anymore. But what could’ve made such a creature? Is it alive or dead? Did Scholomance do this? Did he raise it when he started returning to the wonder? He is not a strong knight, certainly far less capable than myself, but if he stumbled on the path to undoing death itself… Then he holds the key to my life’s work.
I mustn’t get ahead of myself. There’s no connection between that thing and Scholomance. He hasn’t even completed the rites. It wasn’t around when he first started visiting, or through his entire existence as a page. I noticed it weeks ago, but was it around before then? It had to be. Yes. But when?
Blaine concentrated to his utmost, pulling old memories of sensing other auric energies about him. He felt nothing, just as he did when Scholomance visited with his various guests. Whatever the art behind it, it was lost to him now - gone with the title of knight, gone with his body, gone with his life. He couldn’t say which. With nothing left to say of it, Blaine turned to the desk and started cataloguing all that he knew about the new entity, and pointed questions toward its existence. The simple motions of scientific theories assuaged his frayed nerves; he could think more clearly if he simply extracted himself from the situation.
However, there was nothing left to extract anymore.
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Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 7:07 am
[2 of 3] [Blaine] who pays any attentionWord Count: N/A"You're still here." The declaration sounded hollow to him, and yet it lacked the weight to echo through the wonder's ancient halls. Nothing stirred beneath his statement, not even the creature he addressed. Blaine placed a hand against the grand railing that once prevented him from falling to the lower floor in centuries past, shaken as that hand was, while the remaining one hung uselessly at his side. Memories churned within his mind as he struggled to focus on the anomaly existing before him.
It did not respond, nor did it attack. It simply remained near-motionless before him, afloat in its aggregating mists.
I should like to study it, Blaine reminded himself cautiously. Dead or alive, I am ever Scholomance's scientist. It's what I was sworn for. I would be a fool to pass up this opportunity, or waste it on my protege. There's no guarantee that man would even take a concern to what happens within these walls; it's up to me as Scholomance's rightful knight to continue this line of work. And yet, Blaine found himself frozen. He could not advance toward the creature, nor did he want to, and he could not retreat from where he stood. White knuckles gripped the railing as he struggled to maintain his focus on the beast. It did not falter, even when he did. It did not pursue him when his facade began to fade, when the latent fear he fought through life and into death once again surfaced.
He stared at the monstrosity in naked horror, and yet it made no attempts to seize him so. A trembling, terribly pitched voice issued from the dead knight in his incredulity. "What are you? Where did you come from? How did you get in here? Scholomance's walls have been barred from all visitors for centuries, and those who recently explored its halls received a personal invitation by the Wonder's current knight. I have not seen you in the years before, creature, and I can say with certainty that I've constructed nothing like you. I ask you again, I implore you, what are you?"
Its answer arrived as an elongated, echoing rasp that started lowly, jostling the back of its bony spine. It rose in volume and soon crested in a great, ubiquitous hiss before at once dying away into a postmortem rattle. It then approached at a slow clip - the mist trailed behind it dutifully, curling and coalescing into a fine dew on the ground while it floated forward. Finally the creature rested its own bony hand against the banister, much in Blaine's likeness, and looked down to him.
As Blaine stared upward, he realized its skull contorted into a ghastly scowl from years of soft tissue manipulation, yielding an ugly countenance with which it regarded him. It lacked eyes entirely - blackened holes stared back at him where no light could penetrate, and yet two insidious pinpricks of violent, vitriolic vitae looked back at him. He tried to respond, to press with further questions, and yet his nerves abandoned him in a series of nonsensical stammers. He could not challenge the creature in its towering over him. Even in death, his knees felt weak and the hazy remembrance of his heartbeat pounded within his own mind. He felt rooted, though his thoughts exhorted that he flee at once. No such action came, and Blaine could not even wrench his visage from the loathsome entity before him.
The creature's other hand raised upward, almost delicate in its display, then reached forth with an unnerving slowness that left Blaine far more perturbed. Slowly the bony hand encroached, its fingers folding into a fist as its index digit remained extended, and Blaine could do nothing to resist in his gripping fear. And once its finger finally found his forehead, he realized at once a commotion that he hadn't confronted in centuries.
In hindsight, Blaine would recognize wholeheartedly that he could not attribute the sudden memory to the creature's touch, though he could not deny that possibility either. And yet, for the first time in his many years of Scholomance's upkeep, he recalled with immaculate detail a simple memory of its splendor. For that moment, the walls knew the myriad gathering of tapestries and paintings collected through out each respective knight's tenure. Plush blue carpets rolled through each hall, where gilded designs etched upon the marble tile easily. Blue smoke still rushed through the spidering veins of Scholomance, and the din of conversing workers filled the grandiose spaces. Chairs of lacquered wooden finish pale birch in their composition, once more occupied the spaces near the windows. Rounded bistro tables of multipurpose design offered conversational space and study room. Great magical fires burned in the grand hearths of Scholomance's Observatory, where the lunchtime boom reached its peak.
And yet the memory lasted only a second. He was left to the rotten, empty halls once more with only a residual yearning to mark its place.
He knew, then, that this creature was not his enemy.
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Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:00 am
[3 of 3] [Blaine] to the syntax of thingsWord Count: N/A"It's been ages since I worked on anything like this." Blaine did not raise eyes from his work as he spoke. "These labs have been decommissioned for centuries, and over time, most of the clearance protocols have degraded. There are a good handful of these areas that I don't remember the codes for, but I doubt we will need them. I have been through most of these parts at least a dozen times since they started to rejuvenate. I must say, it's quite peculiar - we were taught that all matter degrades as time marches on, and if you wanted to put this into the perspective of the human body, you could say that its humors slowly overwhelm one another as is part of their nature, so to find that any of these areas have recovered themselves is simply unprecedented. It's fascinating, absolutely fascinating, and I am dreadfully ashamed that my protege lacks an interest in such scientific anomalies.
"Really, I've found that he quite lacks the demeanor that Scholomance requires to flourish. Small wonder that this place is still the wreck it is, and often I've wondered to myself if a more suitable knight would know how to harness this startling rejuvenation, but we haven't the luxury of simply banishing one knight to replace it with the next." Blaine paused in his work to sigh. "It is a travesty of sorts. His life will not last forever, but I cannot simply conclude that there will be another knight in his stead. The scientific method can be terribly restrictive at times. All manner of common sense and past precedent tells me that there would indeed be another knight, but one cannot simply assume that based on past experiences. Alas, it's fallacy."
Blaine continued his work in his meticulous manner, ever lining up the required materials on one side with the required tools on a separate table. The ex-knight effectively oscillated between the two work spaces to amass the steps and supplies needed. A recently sketched blueprint lay unfurled across the material-laden table, marking a pathway of construction for the seasoned ancestral knight. He worked slowly at first, testing the weight of each tool in his hands before using them, though soon rote memory returned and he found himself working at nearly the speeds that he could achieve in life. There was, within that, a mix of mourning and delight that he refused to express aloud. Instead, he pushed himself to work faster.
The contraption etched on his blueprints appeared to be a holding vessel of an ornate, gothic styling. It framed a small tube filled with numerous notes, some about the size of the support rods while others mapped the total volume of the tube itself. Along the side lay suggestions of different materials, each with the positive and negative aspects of their composition compared with the ultimate purpose of the vessel he sought to create. Part of the design, he knew, was borrowed from prior attempts in life to establish a similar creation. And yet, knowing that he only attempted another iteration of the same ultimate goal, Blaine felt refreshed to pursue such a line of methodical construction. He felt, for the first time in his centuries here, very nearly alive.
And in those moments lay his dolor.
Blaine pressed on regardless. Soon the base came together and he tested its sturdiness beneath weights. Carefully he tuned its balancing before he added the support rods, which cleverly interlocked with the constituent parts of the base. The top received its own hours of construction time as Blaine painstakingly combined prefabricated slat after slat of material to form the containing lid of the glass tubing itself, which was simply pulled from one of the older, still intact samples. He did not follow procedures of memory, however, in logging the new creation - workshop time eluded him for his waning sense of passing moments, and the materials used saw very little importance in chronicling when no others would go through the files to replace what was used. Convention seemed to fall away all at once when he found himself the only willing participant in Scholomance's ancient customs.
And yet, Blaine did not allow this melancholic realization to faze him. Instead, he looked upon the vessel with a scrutinizing eye as he checked for imperfections, weaknesses, cracks in the glass, mistakes in design, or other slight fallacies. The revision process demanded another count of hours, unbeknownst to Blaine, but he did not find it worrisome. As part of the dead’s ranks, Blaine no longer tired, suffered thirst, or dealt with irritating biological needs cropping up in the heat of near-victory over a design. He knew no pain from accidental missteps. He received no interruption of company. Perhaps, he would reflect later, that was why he found his time in the workshop so cathartic on that day.
“There’s no guarantee this will work, of course,” he continued to himself. “It’s another element of the scientific process. And, naturally, a spot of common sense too. This particular design has gone through many revisions in the past. A dozen or so, if memory serves. It’s quite remarkable to see how it’s turned out.” The vessel remained in his hands as he turned it about, examining how the light refracted through its simple glass tube.
“I admit - I never thought of using the design like this before. When I was… Alive, I always looked at it differently. I remember thinking, if we could find a way to transfer the starseed outside the body, then we could return life in an entirely different fashion. We could preserve the lives we have, the memories we gather, without losing a single one to death. We could then engineer new bodies, better bodies, ones recycled of only the best parts of men, and reuse those starseeds. I always thought that this vessel was to contain that high magic. I designed it of the sturdiest materials I could amass from Scholomance’s connections, and I drafted and redrafted each design after testing. The magic I intended to house in this container was still long under research, however, and I found toward my latter years that one could not simply distill magic and pour it within a vessel like this with any manner of ease.
“But this, I believe, is a far more viable approach. Rebirth doesn’t have to be so utterly complicated. I was a fool to look to recycling bones when the living prove perfectly viable hosts on their own. Simple, isn’t it? The answer was in front of me all along. The living are the ultimate hosts by virtue of their displayed capabilities. So, so simple…
“But we mustn’t dally. We have to go to the Ossuary now, for we still need the fluid for this vessel. None of the actuators here are in working order anymore; the Ossuary holds the last one. We must hope that it still has the required magical power to produce such enchantments.”
Yet, through all his explanations, the monstrosity lingering behind Blaine offered no response. When the ex-knight turned to leave the laboratory, the creature followed without regard to doors or solid walls. Comparatively, the walk to the Ossuary proved not even a fraction of a second when compared to the ageless new life that tantalized them from the horizon.
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Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 10:54 am
Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.Word Count: 1931It was with anger that Scholomance touched the soil of his own wonder that evening. The vast campus dripped the same weeping animosity for its knight as it always had, though with it came a new rawness that weathered the emotions. It did not touch him that night, for his ire burned away the seeping dread before it found a mind to weaken. He did not intend to return to this place for some time, but intention often stood at odds with necessity.
The night remained clear, the residual fog lent a taint of orange to the distant buildings and darkened trees. The saturn rings shone bright overhead. Saturn light projected its thin exhaustion over the campus and threw its stark shadows to the ground. As Scholomance approached the central tower, the darkness of it reached towards him. He did not falter in its jagged, searching portentousness.
There stood a figure to meet him - the one that formed the source of his vexation. Isaiah offered no greeting to the glowing counterpart to his knighthood and chose instead to pass him without a single glance.
“Wait.” While Blaine did not reach out to stop the younger knight, he turned to call after him. It worked, for a time - there Scholomance halted, his back to the prior Scholomance, and while he said nothing to Blaine even now, the dead knight knew he was listening. He hesitated, then, and scrambled to assemble words and pithy phrases to suit his needs, to pardon his deeds. He knew Scholomance was of no mind to talk at present. However, present relations between parties demanded it; Blaine could not pass further time at the wonder without addressing the rift between the two knights.
“It’s hard for me to admit when I foul something up. It’s always benefitted me to just keep going. It… Sounds cowardly, I know, I’ve been told before. I learned, recently, that being able to just pretend something never existed is a talent reserved for the living. When you’re dead, it’s like the whole world stops. Like all the deeds you’ve ever done just hang on you forever, and like every passing second just gathers on your hands and knees and mind. It probably doesn’t make any sense, but it’s like I’m carrying the weight of every moment that’s passed since I died.”
An audible sigh came from the squire. He did not turn around. “You have nothing for me but excuses, Blaine.”
“I have something for you. I hope you’ll forgive me. I know that I did wrong.” To this effect, Blaine extended a box toward his protegé, though his hands shook visibly in offering it. The box itself harbored no outward magical signs, and the only link it spoke of to the campus was the telltale eye carved directly above its latch. Whether it simply broke off or years of disuse wore it away, the wooden enclosure no longer sported its lock. “It won’t happen again. I realize I need you as much as you need me. We have to work together, right?” He nodded at the end, hoping for affirmation. In truth, he simply wanted to abate the ire.
“You sound so stilted.” Begrudgingly Scholomance turned, and he recognized the box with an immediacy. “Don’t even try to stuff my face into that twice, Blaine. You’re treading deep water with your last ********.”
“So you say.” Blaine smiled faintly. “This box holds the remains of the first knight of Scholomance. Or, since you’re the skeptical sort, that would be the story. It has been tradition that every knight of Scholomance take a sample of it for themselves. It’s supposed to… You might find this trite, but it enhances the connection to the wonder and its original purpose. There’s also a rumor that taking the dust seals the fate of every knight who performs this ritual. They have all, since, been bound to die on Scholomance. Personally I don’t think they’re related, but the people who worked here had quite an appetite for those sorts of stories.”
Scholomance stepped toward the box without falter, and peered into its contents. His body reviled the memory of the Ossuary, and a bitter taste filled his mouth in an effort to evacuate it. He swallowed thickly. “It’s all inane garbage to me, Blaine. There is nothing here. There are no ghosts in the halls left, there aren’t curses waiting in every box, and there aren’t world-changing treasures behind every locked door. I’ve seen what Scholomance has to offer. Scholomance is a dead husk, Blaine, and all usefulness it might’ve had was sloughed off centuries ago. Everyone’s dead, everything’s gone, and all that’s left to me is a bare crypt full of useless information. All this wonder has for me is you - a spineless, pointless, useless ghost of a man who thought it best to double-cross me.” He advanced slowly, purposefully, and every step was met with backtracking by his ancestor.
Soon the box became a brandish between the two men, a divider that prevented rage from simply searing him away. Blaine faltered in his response, though with it came a matching frustration of far, far older origins than any Scholomance had faced. “As I told you before, I’m sorry for what happened. I should not have followed it. I was under that monster’s spell, I wasn’t myself, and I’m willing to make up for it now. I’ll tell you everything that I can about Scholomance. You’ll know the wonder as well as I do when I’m finished. Scholomance, please-”
The squire spared no fleck of bitterness toward his ancestor. Gloved hands seized the box in his hands and cast it aside, wide across the sand, directly into the charnel lake that surrounded the wretched wonder. It ripples fanned the whole of the placid surface, touching every part of the land. “And that’s all you have for me. Old rituals, inane stories, tired old legends. Were you listening? Scholomance’s history means nothing to me. It died in its aggregation of rumors and folly. I’m not interested in following these trite traditions. I’m not eating another ounce of a dead man’s bones. I’m not going to fear this place any longer.”
“But your duty is to uphold these traditions!” Blaine chanced no glances toward the lake; the ashes were gone from their coffers now.
“A man who’s wiser than you once told me that I can do what I will with my wonder.” He continued to encroach on his ancestor. A fist collected at his side, whiting knuckles beneath the gloves.
“That man is wrong. As knights, we are to preserve the sanctity of our wonders, uphold their traditions, and further their progress. You have to build upon what you’re given! How do you expect to do that if you tear Scholomance to its very foundations?”
“With your help.”
Betrayal, while a private mistress, was a contagious one - soon Blaine knew the well of rage within his chest that he hadn’t known in a thousand years. He planted feet firmly at the edge of the sand and stared into the eyes of his descendant with equal ire. He would not relent - not to this. He would not forsake the thousand painstaking years spent among these halls, maintaining the slowly crumbling visage of Scholomance. He would not yield to a petulant child of a man who thought himself the remaker of a story far older than his.
He would not allow Scholomance to violate the ageless sanctity of his namesake. “I won’t do it. You can’t just decide to tear down everything that makes this wonder what it is! Not as long as I stand in these halls! I won’t fail it twice!”
Scholomance came to a halt at a breath’s distance from his ancestor. His countenance remained carefully tempered while rage thrummed within him, threatening to quake hands and curl lips and raise voices. His tone came lowly, as quiet as the impartial lake that watched them through its ripples. “You don’t have a choice. If you refuse, I will comb through every part of this wonder looking for your starseed. I will overturn every fallen rock, dig up every old terrarium, break every lock and pilfer every closet until I find that miserable, rotten little rock you call a soul. When I do, I’ll squeeze it to make sure that pathetic projection of yours can feel an ounce of pain. Once I’m satisfied with your squirming about, I’ll eat it myself. And let me remind you, Blaine, that my life has reached a particular type of terrible that prevents me from caring a whit about what comes of me for eating souls. You’ve already given me a taste of bone dust - I need only collect the set of body and mind, don’t I?”
Blaine faltered but once. “You are no knight of Scholomance.”
Scholomance thrust his fist forward, aimed directly at Blaine’s sternum. He expected substance where he found only air. There was nothing before him, then, but the residual wisps of fog. He opened his hand to find nothing in his palm, though he half-expected the presence of a starseed. Grinning darkly beneath the mask, he turned from the spot.
“You have one job now.” He spoke to the air about him as if his ancestor still whorled about him. Purposeful steps delivered him from the muddied stretches near the lake to the great double doors of the central tower. A press of his signet allowed him inside, after the piercing blue glow shredded through the fog. “You’re going to teach me everything I need to know about running these labs. You’re going to facilitate every experiment I elect to run here. You will field my every question, explain every magical phenomena that still rolls around your dusty skull, and dictate every alchemical process that you’ve ever tried in your lifetime and the lifetimes before that. You will give me everything you know, or you won’t even have a soul left to reincarnate.”
The gates yawned open. The lamps within fizzled, popped, and thrummed to life. More light pervaded the area than its previous incarnations, which chased away some of the looming shadows that sprawled off of the great pillars. “There will be no rest, Blaine. We will not waste our ready minds and hands on these idle ghosts of past. We will invent and reinvent and recreate until we know to manipulate the very fibers of magic. Scholomance will know its most potent incarnation without the petty politics you were privy to.”
Down the tattered runner rug he walked, straight for the desk that prefaced the great, winding staircases. “For Scholomance deserves a better knight than you.”
The smattering of lights grew brighter, louder, blindingly brilliant. For once, Scholomance hummed the sound of its power washing through tubules, some popping into a shower of blue and broken glass, and the great old building breathed its first in the thousand years of dormancy. Its knight faltered with the very resonance that hummed his bones, and in the moments passing, he knew a certainty within himself that he found his proper path. From his shoulders sprung sharp epiphyses, from his back came a second spine, and from his hair grew a crown of bone.
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Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 10:57 am
[1 of 3] Our newness lies only in parts rearranged.Word Count: 1040Backdated to 30 June 2016The looming walls of Scholomance towered over the two last flecks of life among its halls. Laden stonework watched in silence, ancient doors groaned their greetings in their curmudgeonly way, and fluted tubes whirred in expectation as the energy flow of the old campus bustled throughout. The knight’s Wonder grew familiar with him in his recurrent, dedicated visits. Ancient walls bearing cracks slowly knit themselves together with each routine week spent in the depths of the research areas. Old, broken terrariums soon blossomed with new glass, even as their confined environments remained dead and derelict.
One voice echoed up against the stonework pleadingly. “There’s something I want to show you. Please, Scholomance, it’s important.” Blaine looked upon his successor earnestly. “I’ve been patient about this, but I cannot wait much longer. This work needs attending to-”
“Are you going to ambush me with another demon creature? Maybe this time bring a few ghosts around for show? I know that thing is still lurking here; I can feel it skulking around sometimes when we’re in the bowels of the Repository.” He shot his companion a sidelong look. “No, Blaine, whatever it is can wait. We have work to do. Real work. Work that doesn’t involve me getting killed so you can try your hand at a halfassed resurrection.” The knight spared little time for his deathly mentor, and settled on a quicker pace toward the labs. Spinal heels thocked against the floor in an uncanny irreverence for death.
“We’re almost done. Perhaps in another month I’ll have the prototype completed. We’ll need materials for it. Blaine, I’ll need you to start compiling that list based on the most magically-conductive plastics you can think of… Wait, do you even know what plastic is? Somehow I don’t think you made it to the wonderful world of interconnected technology…” The knight pressed a gloved finger to chin in afterthought.
“Whatever you need, Scholomance, but can this wait for one moment? I implore you to hear what I have to say.”
Finally Scholomance stalled, and whirled about to face Blaine in a backwards walk. “Then tell me what it is that has your panties in such a twist.”
“There’s a project. It’s… I guess you could call it my legacy. It’s very important to me.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned it before, then? This is the first time I’ve heard about any legacy of yours.”
“Because I’d forgotten about it. I’d forgotten in the same way that I had about most of the things that you now know about knighthood.” He paused, then sighed. “The other night, I went looking for that spirit. I heard him in the halls again and I wanted to see if I could track his movements. He led me down into the deeper reaches of the Observatory, past the great divider. I thought it was headed toward the Code, but it veered off into an area that used to be collapsed. It’s not much better now, but there was enough room for a man to crawl through.”
“Get on with it.”
Blaine bit his own tongue in response. “Right. I followed it, and it led me to this chamber that I barely remember using. It was for my last project - my most revised attempt at restoring life. The body there still looks perfectly preserved. Scholomance, you know nearly all that I can teach you. I want you to help me finish this project. It’s my legacy. I think, together, we may be able to restore it at last. We might finally learn how to harness life.”
Blaine’s eyes shone with a passion that left Scholomance cold and skeptical. The breathing knight looked on with his scorn, waiting for a catch or a compromise or a threat that came from such a request. Must he donate his own life-force to restore another’s? The knight set his teeth before responding. “So you just happened to remember it as you went blundering through this tower. You do realize this is a terrible setup for getting me to help you, right? You all but admitted you had contact with that creature again, and you know I haven’t forgotten about what you did. Your little deviations are well-known to me, Blaine. I told you once before, I’m not taking the chance.”
“Please,” he begged, hands pressed palms together in desperation. The dying light of the sun splayed across his ghostly face, piercing it in an inquisition that left only his earnesty to bear. No room was left upon his features for subterfuge or malediction. He looked no more than a desperate man looking for a final promise of redemption. He looked to Scholomance as a man looks to his lord, his king, his higher power in a most vulnerable moment, and the look alone softened the knight in his staunch callousness. “In all my years as a knight of this campus, I’ve made a mockery of myself and my predecessors. My inventions became the butt of many jokes because of their failure rate. My research was jeered at, spat upon, and abhorred by my peers. I was considered no better than the crazy keeper of those catacombs on the other end of this continent. I was considered no different.
“I know your distaste for me, Scholomance, and I don’t fault you for it. I am accustomed to it, and in a sense, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. But please trust me in this, and let me have my closure on the last project I ever started. Even if it ends in yet another failure, it will bring me peace. Please, Scholomance. If not for me, then do this last favor for its potential benefits to you as a knight. Do it to prove to yourself that you, too, can invent potent and life-changing technologies to better your kingdom.”
Scholomance waited in silence for a time, his eyes never leaving his mentor’s face. The look among his deathly features never changed - the passion never faltered in his gaze. He felt sorry for the man, of course, but the cautionary flutters in his stomach begged for a compromise.
“Give me your starseed,” he conceded at last. “Then we’ll talk.”
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Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 1:29 pm
[2 of 3] Death, it turns out, is the mother of all conflicts.Word Count: 1473Backdated to 30 June 2016The stone sat heavy in his hand, too hot for clammy fingers. Its presence seared guiltily through his gloves. Scholomance knew he would never escape thinking about it - he would never avoid drawing comparisons between himself and the deeds of the Negaverse. He knew the differences between that faction and himself dwindled with each strategic solution he chose, yet he did not begrudge his own actions. Safety mattered. Insurance mattered. Survival mattered.
Nonetheless, the incessant complaints of other knights against the Negaverse introduced themselves in his mind, and would not cease through the long journey down the core Scholomance building. He remembered, quite keenly, the cold wrath of Laurelite and found no objections to her actions within himself. He recalled interfering with a deathblow to the princess, and found no fault in that either. Perhaps, he then considered, neutrality was as much a dog and pony show as moralism. He was, undeniably, in bed with the Negaverse on precarious deals and choices. He infiltrated their domain at the offer of Caedus and violated part of his stance with Cinnabar, though he never once raised his hand against one of their officers. Perhaps neutrality was the lie he told himself, and duality was the truth he practiced.
And now, he adopted Negaverse tactics in the name of his knighthood. Yes, he decided at last - playing both sides sounded significantly closer to the truth.
“Through here,” Blaine’s voice rang out through the long silence, startling the knight from his inward debate. The mentor gestured toward one of many largely collapsed segments of the underground Observatory’s spidering core before chancing it himself. “It’s a tight fit, mind you, and it hasn’t changed much since your last visit. I sincerely hope that weight you’ve gained doesn’t impact you terribly here.”
He called me fat, the knight realized in a mix of despair and anger. “My girlfriend thinks I’m perfectly normal-sized,” he sniped back in vitriol. No further comments arose as he, too, sank to the ground for the long and painful trial of crawling through a largely inaccessible tunnel.
Through the darkness, his only indication of further progress came from a dull, pale light oscillating in the target room. It swept across the floor in cold illumination of the rubble surrounding him, and indicated the still-long journey ahead. With no room to turn his head, Scholomance could not chance looking back and estimating his progress. In places he considered that he may be thoroughly and irreparably stuck, and in attempts to brute force his way from the situation, tore through his long cloak and incurred scratches in the process. His spinal ‘tail’ dragged faithfully behind him with only a rare catch on a jutting rock or piece of detritus. Scholomance decided in an instant that he would not visit this chamber twice, regardless of the treasures it housed.
When he could stand at last, Scholomance heaved a sigh and canvassed the room. One hand froze against his back, now stiff from the long venture and hatefully small confines. The room offered very little by way of sights to see; as a circular room, it offered little more than shelving and doorways on its outer perimeter, and those shelves were largely empty save for a few ancient tools strewn haphazardly. Indeed, the only focal point of the room was the large, dead horse laid upon an equally large morgue slab. The light above it, another of the white fixtures that he spied in the entry of the Observatory, held captive a smaller pale light that orbited about it. As it traveled, the dead horse appeared to glow in response.
“I thought we went over this, Blaine. Resurrection really isn’t your forté.” Scholomance paced around the creature slowly, pausing only once to probe its lips with a gloved finger and inspect the teeth within. “What has you thinking that you actually have a shot at this?”
Blaine settled himself into an old stool that looked unable to house the weight of the living. His arms crossed and he looked upon his creation solemnly, or even apologetically. “I’m sure I’ve told you before, but we knights of Scholomance traveled often. We had visits to pay for our backers, research to do at other planets, and places to inspect for importing new materials.” When Scholomance started to object, he ceased the action with a splayed hand. “I’ll keep this short. When I was on a visit to Mercury, I was waylaid by a storm to a different Wonder there. It had these creatures called Golems - great, solid sentinels with life and intelligence to obey its masters - and yet, they weren’t really alive. They were ‘constructs’, or creatures made of nonliving materials. They were not resurrections, because they never had life.
“In my later experiments, I went back to that idea. I abandoned true resurrection on the idea that I might learn more from creating a construct, or Golem, of my own. This horse was the fruit of that work, created from other magics. It was never alive. The experiment was named Zalmoxis, after a regional god known in these parts of Saturn. I don’t remember why I abandoned it here… I can’t say if it was due to this area collapsing or something else. But, the body has remained whole for all this time. Its magic hasn’t yet diminished. I don’t know how long it will last, Scholomance, but it is the last project I have access to now. We can go through the final steps easily enough. Everything else has already been done for you.”
“So what’s left? How are we supposed to ‘resurrect’ this construct? You already put it together with magic, so… Are we going to keep adding more magic until it jumps up off its slab?”
“Essentially.” Blaine touched his creation not with the care of an artist, but with the inquisitive grasp of the scientist. Hooves, legs, and body were checked for relative stability while he spoke. “That is precisely why I need your help. Only the current knight of Scholomance has access to its deep well of magic. I need you to reach the piece of Code, as you have before, and dredge up some of its power. With enough concentrated magic, we will construct life in this creature.”
Scholomance blinked, skeptically. “... So that’s it? ‘Go fetch a bucket of water and we’ll have ourselves a brand-new horse’? Where’s the catch? Where’s the difficulty? It’s significantly more complicated to go about that on Earth.”
“You don’t work with magic on Earth, do you?” Blaine smiled. His hands framed the slab firmly, and he grew more confident in his dissertation. “Magic, as I’ve studied it, is a very pliable force. Take the power that you wield now, for example. You may thrust people apart from one another in the illusory template of Scholomance, and that power bends to your will - you may cast upon anyone so long as your will permits it. Granted, our will as knights is not so great that we may overcome the nature of our magic - and while this may sound confusing at first, it’s fairly simple in explanation.”
Tentatively, Scholomance joined in the discussion. “Our wills as knights are not great enough to overcome the piece of the Code that lends us our magic, right? So as a knight I can’t use my magic to shoot hearts out of my a**, because my will would have to supersede the Code’s. I can only go so far with it.”
“Absolutely.” Blaine grew more solemn, and the levity dropped from his voice. “You understand perfectly what I’ve studied for years. But, our purpose here is no less of a feat from it - in fact, I think it may be more a trial for us than the complications on Earth. We must both understand that the end result is not within our power - it is the Code that will ultimately decide how its magic is used. Perhaps it will decide that our construct will not take life, and that this experiment will therefore be a failure. We have to accept this as a possibility when going forward.”
“That acceptance falls on you alone. The Code’s already told me plainly that I’m a shitty knight blundering around with its whim. Pleasant conversation, that.” He half-turned and granted Blaine the full view of his back before continuing his response. “Basement adventures again, right? I just need to have a chat with that glowing ball of bullshit and be on my way?”
Blaine’s hands dropped into his lap and he gazed upon his half-finished creation. “... Yes.”
“Got it.”
“One last thing, Scholomance. Whether we succeed or not… I’m going to need a moment alone.”
Scholomance offered no response. There wasn’t need, he realized, as he gripped the ancient starseed in his palm.
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Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 9:19 pm
[3 of 3] Death is the road to awe.Word Count: 1264The trip to the very bowels of Scholomance, he found, grew significantly easier each time he visited their confines. He did not relish the ubiquitous paranoia that hounded him since the discovery of Scholomance’s haunting, but it proved less of a deterrent each time. Stone steps and ancient columns recovered small margins of their stability with each visit the knight paid; no longer did he fear so greatly the crumbling of the institution beneath his weight. Instead, anticipation grew into a heady foe with all the reminders of the Code’s vitriolic words. The dreams did not abandon him, despite finding the source of the Code’s naysaying. He knew, with little doubt, that the castigations held within them a grain of truth that he couldn’t ignore. That, he decided, was the brunt of the struggle in descending the ancient steps.
As he faced the metal filigree barring the basin from view, Scholomance felt himself brace. He expected, in those last steps, to hear the familiar mockery stemming from the core of his Wonder. He imagined that the arguments against him would only renew. He hoped, if nothing more than for familiarity and normalcy, that the Code would remind its knight of his failing expectations.
And yet, there were no voices in the solemn chamber.
He approached and parted the metal mesh, and for an instant dreaded that the Code piece left him entirely. His muscles stiffened in the instant before he recognized the familiar glow at the bottom of the water basin, and he relaxed only marginally. Still it remained silent, unresponsive, dead. Dead, he supposed, in the way that all things beyond life were dead. With a sigh, he braced both hands against the basin. Now it fell to him to wrest the magic from the Code, and bring it up to Blaine for the experiment. Somehow he would transport its will, through water he couldn’t touch, and deliver it for their cause. But short of seizing a Home Depot bucket and scooping the thing away, Scholomance had little idea how to carry out the deed.
And, as he stared into the glowing orb, he wasn’t certain he wanted to. While he readily obtained and turned over his own starseed, Blaine posed trouble in his previous transgressions against Scholomance. He did not easily forget the origins of the phylactery in his possession. He could simply allow the old knight to fail
In
each
passing
thought
he blinked, and the world shifted in a manner wholly within him.
It turned
and swayed
and left him aside
and left him for dreams too old to bear
for a young
for a younger
for a younger knight
in a dark
in a darker
in a darker light
fanned of flames and history
Its age was never known to him;
He knew only of its whim.
“s**t,” he gasped at last, when he recognized where and when and why he stood. His grip on the basin was shaken. Ripples passed along its surface harmlessly, and his gloves slid across the cool marble until he strayed too close to its iridescent orange flowers. The glass tubing piped through the whole of the Wonder glowed brilliantly in a surge, and he felt the very building breathe a great gasp of life that it never expelled. Scholomance hated how easily it reminded him that he knew no power in this place; that he, too, was simply an instrument of the Code’s will. Free will, he decided, was as much a sham as neutrality.
He left as soon as he remembered how to move his feet.
xxx
“Good news,” Blaine started before Scholomance finished crawling through the collapsed hallway. He crossed the room in a handful of paces, and gestured toward the tubing across the ceiling. “We have the power we need to continue with the experiment. I took the liberty of preparing our conduits while you were away; I still had the tubing stored from when I first set up here. They’re linked into the facets connecting the tubes, but I’m afraid you need to be the one to hook them into Zalmoxis. It can’t be done with anyone but you.” He paused, then, and regarded the other knight strangely. “Are you alright, Scholomance?”
Scholomance straightened and brushed his dirtied coat. He eyed Blaine carefully before proceeding into the domed room. “I’m fine,” he answered, clipped. “So that’s all there is to this, then? I stick it with a few needles and it either wakes up or it doesn’t? Fine. Give me the conduits.” A gloved hand was raised, and he watched Blaine expectantly.
The mentor was suspicious, but could not place the frigid mood change that Scholomance endured. He spared little time to puzzle it; the young knight was willing to undertake his last experiment nonetheless and Blaine spared no chances in forestalling it. With the cannulae gathered and passed reverently to his protege, Blaine laced fingers into a tight lattice and waited eagerly for the final administrations. No longer could he conceal the excitement from his visage, nor did he see the need to; Scholomance would be convinced of his sincerity through passion alone.
“Cross your fingers.” Scholomance claimed a seat next to the great horse, and after eyeing its form, chose a spot near the presumed sternocleidomastoid. The sharpened point slid in without resistance, and the same brilliant blue light that coursed through all of the Wonder now rushed into the construct lying atop the table. Scholomance half-expected a Spielberg-esque rise in an orchestra, accompanied by a heartwarming scene of a creature gracefully returning to life. Otherwise, he expected the horse to remain dead on the table, with no further changes to its physiology.
The reality, however, differed from both expectations. Initially the horse snorted, then it convulsed, then all muscles tightened into thick cords in spasm as the creature recalled their operation. A muffled whinny rose from the back of its throat. In a sudden thrash, the creature fought to right itself and test its ankles with its weight. Initially it stumbled and threatened to topple off the slab entirely, but soon its ancient memory caught up to it. Memory returned to the creature, and with it, a timeless grace to its movements. Stepping off the slab entirely, it turned to face its lone living knight. Pale green eyes lighted on the man, and begged answers with gaze alone.
Scholomance held its glance in kind, and moved not once during its earlier thrashings. Transfixed, he saw no reason to move, even when the beast threatened to roll upon him from the convulsions. He was as placid water in regarding the construct, and for many moments afterward he never heeded his mentor’s exaltation in this perceived success. Finally he looked upon Blaine, and in a slow gesture, relinquished the hostaged starseed to the stone slab.
“You lied,” he said at last. “That’s your last strike, Blaine.”
The man paled, if such could be said of the dead. “What do you mean?” Hastily he snatched his starseed from the surface.
“Zalmoxis existed long before your time.” Scholomance stood then, and looked to the horse. “The Code granted that much. Enjoy your success, Blaine, for as long as it means something to you.” He remained within the room not a second longer.
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Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:27 pm
The Tell of a FingerWord Count: 1916So you're the gimped knight I heard about. The one that thought he could best the Negaverse in duplicity. The general's cool gaze settle on the man, unmoving. His attention slid from the empty sleeve to the pristine wooden boards beneath him, to the wrought-iron that curled the slats together into a bench. He took in the way the knight melted into his surroundings in a poor attempt to shirk duty. He looked for desperation, defeat, resignation in the knight's eyes and found them cleverly guarded from belying his inner turmoils. Ultimately, Umber did not care; emotion seldom played a part in his dealings. Emotion found no first chair here. "State your name."
From where he say, Scholomance watched the general standing not five yards from him. The dwindling penumbra from the street lamp cast him into a half-shade, where his upper features became indiscernible past a specific point. He spotted wrapped, tattered pants and equally rugged boots. He noted arms covered in tattoos. He considered a gruffness in the man's voice and a straightforward choice to his words. "Scholomance," the knight answered freely. There would be no quarter for resistance here.
"Stand up."
Scholomance rose, and his civilian cane touched down on the ground. In the deathly chill of the evening, most of his joints locked in a terrible shudder.
But Umber abided none of it. Stepping forward into the light, the general seized the cane from the knight's sole arm. He spared the item no inspection. Umber held it much like a weapon of its own.
Wincing, the knight extended his hand to retrieve the device. "If you're going to have me stand, it --"
"You will speak when spoken to." Umber paused, watched the knight, and ensured that he listened. Inwardly he hoped for another breath out of line, for a chance to exercise the welling frustration regarding the insipid Negaverse agents that grew fat on complacency. He hoped to work out his distaste for Chrysocolla, for Ochre, for Persephone, and for Haüyne. It seemed, however, that Schörl broke the brunt of this one's interest in rote defiance. A pity.
"Captain Witherite has kept a dossier about your contributions." The end of the cane slapped into his open palm. "One senshi delivered to General Benitoite. Energy draining practices for Lieutenant Saponite under General Xenotime's supervision. A warning issued to one Dark Mirror basic senshi, name unknown. General Schörl confirmed the release of your signet ring once your cooperation is fully explored."
Scholomance nodded once. His leg trembled against the ongoing siege of pain. Porcelain gritted together and threatened to crack.
"Give me names. Powered and civilian. Give me their magic information so we can decide who to kill and who to corrupt. You have three seconds to speak." He stepped forward, now in full light of the sodium glow.
s**t, this isn't affording any time --
"One."
His leg twitched painfully, and Scholomance seized it with a firm grip. "I don't --"
"Two."
"I don't know anyone--"
"Three." The general wrapped both hands about the cane and swung it into the knight's injured leg with a resounding crack. The cane itself nursed a deep fissure through its lacquered wood and Scholomance collapsed in a staccato shout. "Names," he demanded again, and the cane raised while his voice did not.
"I don't know any names!" Scholomance seethed, as he worked his fist into the empty air to throttle the pain that dominated him. His leg throbbed deep and agonizing with the general's strike. He remembered the cane in his mouth, the taste of wood and gold - "Has your subordinate told you nothing of me? I worked with both sides from the start! If someone exposed their identity to me, I would've sold it by now! And since your cohort wounded me so, no one's come running to take pity on me and flash me their pedestrian alter-ego! Don't be so ******** daft..."
Another crack on the leg, and the cane splintered wholesale from halfway down the shaft. The freed piece clattered and rolled into the street where it lay waiting for the next passing car. He waited until the protracted yelp ceased. "Then you refuse to help." He stepped forward then, and swapped the broken cane to his right hand. A kneel, and he reached for the knight's chest. He reached in such a manner that cloth and skin and bone bade him entry. He reached in such a manner that the knight grew clammy once Umber's fingers passed his breastbone without touching its tissue. And when those very fingers brushed the gem that the knight held dear, more objections urged Umber's attention.
"Wait," Scholomance started as his breath hitched, "I can tell you about knights. And senshi. I can give you their magic, but not their civilian names."
"It's irrelevant." His hand squeezed.
The knight hissed through false teeth. "I can tell you about last summer -- when we reached Negaspace --" His fingernails trawled dirt from the macadam, seeking purchase against the general's seizure of his life in one simple gesture. He held breath knowing that it would be his last, that his final mistake was to side with morality and fall for its fatal tithe,
But the general's hand laxed. He pulled fingers from beyond the guard of bone once more and his forearm rested upon a crouched knee. Those same unyielding eyes fell upon Scholomance once more. "Tell me everything you know."
Scholomance borrowed a few moments to correct his respiration. The knight drew himself to a seated position where he could lean against the lip of the bench, even if he remained on the dirty pavement. "We found someone who crawled himself out of the Rift. I say 'we' because a large group of people was already there before I arrived. I didn't find many I know." He paused, searched the general for some sense of anger or urgency or interest, but found nothing more than an unending brightness. Eyes like mercury looked just as toxic. "We came upon a man, I guess you could say, and he insisted on cloaking all his words in secrecy. He said he wanted to go back home, and to do it, he needed our energy. He acted incensed at Beryl, the old sorceress of the Negaverse, and offered a means to get back at the faction if we provided him his way back to his planet.
"I did not provide him with the energy. I brought the crystal to the Negaverse, actually, but I saved his name for myself. Trust me, I already learned the mistake in that," he added hastily, gesturing to his arm. "When we returned, and provided him the energy he requested, he used his crystal technology to open for us a portal into Negaspace. He warned us of the danger, and the impending time limit should we fail to return soon. But beyond that, I do not know what happened to him or where he might be hiding - or even if he still remains on this planet. I expect not, especially since he claimed himself some kind of royalty on his own planet. He gave no name for it, but his name was Caedus."
Umber offered no outward opinion. He shifted his grip on the cane, then pressed its jagged edge into Scholomance's thigh deeply enough to elicit blood. "The truth, knight." He need not offer further threats, he knew.
"That is the truth," Scholomance hissed. He pressed a boot to the general's chest and tried to urge the man away, but Umber countered by seizing the underside of his knee. "I swear it. I know it sounds dense. Some convenient Deus Ex Machina drags himself out of the Rift, suddenly needs our help, and trades us a way into the Negaverse. It sounds like a piss poor plot of a paltry Science Fiction novel. But it's true! Think of what we've lost!"
"Go on." Umber added further force behind the cane. Slowly it bit through the flesh of his thigh, dead-set on reaching ********>" Scholomance breathed a few heavy breaths. "This person who no one knew and no one could validate gave us entry straight into the heart of the Negaverse - and we knew where he came from. He sent us back into your domain knowing that it was dangerous, and that we would all die. Look at the numbers! You should know how many senshi or knights were knocked down that day. We didn't win, we disappeared! We escaped! We left a death trap that Caedus set for us and it wasn't by his hand that we're still here today!"
Umber did not relent in his presses. "You cost us our starseeds. You cost us one General-Queen and nearly another. And you stole something from us. Tell me - what did you take and who saved you?"
A halo of stars circled his vision. Scholomance drew another breath past the pain; his leg felt weak, and any thought applied to it only sent it awash in further agony. "The thing in the old building, in the Academy, it was a piece of the Code."
"What is the Code?"
"It's the source of power for knights. We each hold a piece of the Code at our wonders, and we found another piece of it in Negaspace, so we took it out. We found it in the claws of a giant scorpion youma. It spat acid at everyone."
"Don't digress," Umber warned.
"It's like our version of Metallia! It lends us all its power, and occasionally it speaks to us to tell us how shitty we are. Sometimes we answer questions. Mostly it sits in our wonders and provides us our magic. I don't know why there was a piece in Negaspace. My guess is that the Academy was once a wonder or something - maybe belonging to some Earth knight that died before Negaspace happened - but the other knights wanted to save it, so they took it out. As far as I know, it didn't do anything for knights as a whole."
"And the one who stole you from us?"
"I don't know her name. If I did, I've forgotten it. She looked like a princess with long, pale hair and a short dress. She warped us out of that place when Caedus' deathtrap closed and left us back on Earth."
Umber's countenance did not change. "What of our starseeds?"
"Gone."
"I see." He wrenched the cane from the knight's leg, calling up another cry. He straightened shortly after. "You've been cooperative. I'll see to it that Schörl knows." The general vanished in a blink.
Scholomance was left without a name to add to a face, but it did not matter. The amount of information he disclosed concerned him, and he truly started to doubt that reclaiming his signet ring might glean an answer to this eternal dilemma. He cost the life of a senshi, donated his energy, and urged the flight of those who opposed the Negaverse and to what end? To recover a single means to enter a dead wonder? Scylla was right - the Negaverse had everything. The Negaverse would never lose. Struggles resulted in Sisyphean exercises and what was there to gain from that? Dignity? Scholomance knew there was no dignity in death.
For life's not a paragraph, and death - I think - is no parenthesis.
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Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2016 2:45 pm
ResolutionWord Count: 5342017 opened with a bang - a euphemistic one. When Isaiah stirred, just before dawn crept through the window and leered at them, he felt the familiar pounding headache from the night's activities. Already he drank too many tequila sunrises, mixed his liquor, and complicated an already rocky relationship by sleeping with his girlfriend in her own bed. It wasn't a bad time, especially after her recent piercing that he goaded her into, but Isaiah expected more of himself and his tentatively rebuilding self-esteem.
Apparently it failed to make significant progress.
Isaiah forced himself upright and felt a thin rope of drool connect him to the cold pillow. He groaned. Slowly his brain beat against all sides of his skull, searching for the weakest point to make an escape. Dehydration nagged him endlessly. The special cigarettes he committed to on the balcony interacted badly with the alcohol, and left him in a dead sleep over the course of the night. A quick glance at the bedside table confirmed none of his usual items - aspirin, ibuprofen, cigarettes, last night's drink… He sighed through his nose, seized his dentures from the effervescent glass, and forced himself out of bed.
Dressing proved another matter altogether. Isaiah slowly adjusted to the difficulties that came with dressing the way he used to; usually he asked Kavinsky to help him out in the mornings when he had the day off. This time, however, Kavinsky wasn't around to provide for him. Waking Gwen sounded similarly poor; if he managed that, she wouldn't be able to sleep through her potential headache. Isaiah settled for pulling his pants on with some considerable finagling, donning his socks, pulling a shirt over his head and leaving his everything unbuttoned. Leather did not often sport the flexibility he needed to close a button with one hand, and he doubted Gwen would care if she woke to him with his pants open.
Afterward, Isaiah crossed to Gwen's side of the bed. Her dog, Reilly, hadn't yet grown wise to his wakefulness. His feet padded gently on the hardwood, creaking but once when he passed too close to the foot of the bed. He glanced down at her then, and noted how tousled red hair tried to claim her face in a fitful sleep. Further, his gaze traveled to the small ceramic tray that housed her emerald necklace, a separate pair of earrings, and the nondescript sterling ring that he recognized as her signet ring.
Reaching carefully, Isaiah navigated the ring out of its basin without waking her with scraping sounds. He framed the ring between his teeth and stuck his index finger through the hole, into his mouth, and found that it would not pass his second knuckle. s**t.
Isaiah kept his finger curled to hold the ring. Leaning in, he whispered his apology against Gwen's ear before he slipped out the door; morning started to break, and Isaiah faced a long day ahead of him. Reilly barked his greeting when he passed the couch and Isaiah left the apartment as quick as he could, setting out into the deep cold of January before he met the farthest reaches of Saturn.
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